This is going to be a slight ramble.
There needs to be a special word, german or otherwise, for that sensation when something triggers a vague memory from the past. This usually happens to me in regard to my childhood, which is separate geographically, as well as in time, from the rest of my life.
Last night the local PBS channel showed a documentary on Jens Jensen, the founder of landscape architecture in this country (okay, I guess there was Olmsted, too). I didn’t recognize the name, although as the documentary went on, I kept thinking — “Hey, I’ve been there!” I watched the whole thing, amazed I’d been ignorant of this man who’d designed so much of the landscape around me in childhood.
Jens Jensen documentary
It’s possible he’s responsible for the existence of the park where we did our “wilderness” and eco training in 6th grade. (For any Chicagoland people reading this, it was Camp Reinberg. Picture me in the rain with a compass trying to find my way back to camp with only a garbage bag with holes cut in it for a rain parka, with the monsoon rains sheeting down…)
Who knew? And I am sure I must’ve been in the Garfield Park conservatory (pictured above), only I have no clear memory of it, and I never had any luck asking my parents about my childhood. Unless they decide to spontaneously tell the story at some awkward social occasion.
Which is why I suspect them of having a secret life.
Bootleggers? Running guns to Canada? Working undercover for Interpol?
There were stories (and sometimes pictures) of places I have no memory of being. Some were cute (me posing as a lion at the Biltmore estate) some were just odd.
For example, I never learned anything more about this one:
“You were so taken with that parrot in the restaurant, do you remember?”
No.
“The owner said you were the smartest baby she’d ever seen.”
No Mom, I don’t remember. How old was I?
“You would’ve been about 2 or 3.”
And where was this?
“Louisiana.”
What the heck was I doing in Louisiana?
What were you doing in Louisiana?
“That’s none of your business.”
See what I mean?
Any question about what these 2 people were up to before they had kids got this response:
“That’s my life, not yours.”
or
“We’re entitled to have our own private lives, it has nothing to do with you.”
Nuh-uh.
Nobody else’s parents were secretive about their past life. Nobody on tv behaved that way. AND my Dad was always reading spy novels.
Suspicious, right?
Let us ponder what mischief might occur in Louisiana, even with a 2 year old in tow. Anything can happen during naps.